along through the halls. This time the children only turned pale, and clung closer to their parents, with their eyes stretched open, staring wonderingly. Mr. Skates carried the baby, and Mrs. Skates led James and hung on her husband’s arm, till, with a crowd that kept swelling all the way from “No. 150” down, they found themselves floating into the spacious dining-hall of the hotel; and somehow, they hardly realized how, they were seated at the table. Everything was new and strange. Mr. Skates innocently stared at the services and ceremonies he could not understand, and Mrs. Skates increased and made manifest her confusion, by trying to appear at ease, and accustomed to it all. The “great towel” laid by his plate Mr. Skates had no use for, with a good white handkerchief in his pocket, so he “doubled it up,” and put it behind him, to keep it out of little James’s hands.
That hopeful young “scion” opened the table scene by being vastly troublesome. He refused to be seated on his father’s knee, and clamoured bravely for his “high chair.” Mr. Skates’s arguments for some time were of no avail, but at length he succeeded in persuading his small but resolute antagonist that “they did not have high chairs here in the city,” and he must either be good, or be sent to No. 150 to stay alone. James surrendered; but as soon as he was fairly settled in his place, and had looked a long inquisitive stare into the faces of the company on the opposite side of the table, he seized a silver fork that lay by his father’s plate, and began raking it over his cheeks and his protruded tongue.
“What’s this, pa? what’s this thing?” he inquired, holding it still more fast, while his father attempted to take it out of his determined grasp.
“You mustn’t meddle with it—let it alone, James. It looks some like a spoon!” replied Mr. Skates, forcing it away from the little hand, and laying it down on the cloth. But James, with the children’s universal license to misbehave on the most important occasions, instantly took it up again, and began ringing the elegant champagne glass which a servant that moment presented to a gentleman who sat next.
